The issue of Quality of Life for game devs is back on the news: Feat. R* San Diego

[obonicus]

They are one of a kind, but they aren't without alternative ... because they are luxury not necessity. A one of a kind software project meant to run a factory is generally without alternative.

Maybe for factory automation you have no real choice, which I'll admit I don't know much about. But in other areas you'll have, say, HP, IBM and Oracle all trying to get a contract for a solution/project. Meanwhile, for games, I don't think the games are entirely fungible, not for big names. Someone in the market for Metal Gear Solid won't go for Call of Duty. They may not even go for something closer, like Splinter Cell.

Areas of software development which are not commodity can't really be compared to games. If we take the grand daddy of commodity software development, Microsoft, slips are once again pretty common.

Vista's development was very troubled, but isn't Office actually pretty good at staying on schedule? Visual Studio too?

 

[MfA]

Maybe for factory automation you have no real choice, which I'll admit I don't know much about. But in other areas you'll have, say, HP, IBM and Oracle all trying to get a contract for a solution/project.

Yeah, but you make the investment up front ... so in the end you take what you can get regardless. They will do their best for their reputations sake, but in the end you are still a captive audience. A fundamentally different kind of beast than a customer for consumer software.

 

[ban25]

Using buzzwords doesn't help anyone if you can't do it right. And yes, a delay of 6 months on a 3-4 year project is a big deal in other areas of software development. (Assuming not a renegotiation, of course.) I'm not sure why game development would be the exception. It means someone along the way screwed up. I understand that the scope is much more fluid with game development, but that's clearly part of the problem. You have stories of putting bodies to work on a project before anyone even has a clear idea of what the project is. How the hell does anyone mitigate risk in a situation like that?

It is very ignorant to assume there is no process in a multi-billion dollar industry.

Obviously not. Working in the valley means bush-league project management? It may be a revelation, but other areas actually get software development down to a process. And in fact, the studios that can deliver software reliably have remarkably highreputations.

Here's a news flash for you: people at Google crunch. People at Apple crunch. People at Microsoft crunch. People at small startups? Well, to quote an infamous politician, "You betcha!"

 

[obonicus]

It is very ignorant to assume there is no process in a multi-billion dollar industry.

Actually, it's not. Bigger industries have relied on ad hoc development, or on processes that were effectively ad hoc. What is ignorant is to assume that revenue indicates any level of process maturity. As MfA said, disastrous projects don't belong exclusively to games. That doesn't mean that games should therefore be allowed to ignore everyone else's hard-learned lessons. Especially since some of those hard-learned lessons have been around for longer than the game industry's existed in any recognizable form.

Here's a news flash for you: people at Google crunch. People at Apple crunch. People at Microsoft crunch. People at small startups? Well, to quote an infamous politician, "You betcha!"

And which of these have a proven track record of taking on projects and delivering them consistently and with high quality? Microsoft's the only one that even does that sort of work and I'm pretty sure that for those projects they don't design them around expected crunch time (because people have known about its lack of effectiveness for over 30 years). I mean, seriously, you're going to use "we're so smart we don't need project management" Google as part of your argument?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

And which of these have a proven track record of taking on projects and delivering them consistently and with high quality? Microsoft's the only one that even does that sort of work and I'm pretty sure that for those projects they don't design them around expected crunch time (because people have known about its lack of effectiveness for over 30 years). I mean, seriously, you're going to use "we're so smart we don't need project management" Google as part of your argument?

Microsoft has crunchtime also. Especially so as their projects start to get close to deadlines. And even WITH crunchtime it isn't unusual for projects to slip for Microsoft.

IBM, HP, Oracle, etc. also have crunchtime. It's just that they aren't as in the news and their deadlines aren't as important to the bottom line. If they slip a bit, it isn't like their customers are going to immediately migrate to a competing solution. Especially when validation and migration to new systems could easily take 6 months or more. For corporations it's often more cost effective to continue using a year out of date piece of software than to move to a competitor's software.

And while IBM, HP, and Oracle are doing well now. All three of them have been considerably down at various points in the past. At least HP and Oracle were at times close to filing for bankruptcy protection and/or prime targets for buyouts/hostile takeovers.

Regards,
SB